Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) on Saturday met with two Italian lawmakers in an unannounced visit to Milan, local media reports said.
In separate posts on Facebook, Paolo Formentini, vice president of the Chamber of Deputies Foreign Affairs Committee, called the meeting “an honor,” while Italian lawmaker Igor Iezzi wrote that he is “always on the side of freedom.”
“It was an opportunity to reiterate that the status quo in the Taiwan Strait must remain the current one and that freedom of navigation must always be defended,” Formentini told the Italian news site Le Formiche on Saturday.
Photo: Screen grab from Igor Iezzi’s Facebook page
The visit was also important as Taiwan prepares to set up a representative office in Milan, its second in Italy, the site said.
In Taipei, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it had no comment on the reported meeting in Milan.
As Italy does not formally recognize the Republic of China, meetings between serving Italian lawmakers and Taiwanese officials are rare.
Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs via CNA
Wu on Monday last week departed on a trip to Europe, during which he visited the Warsaw School of Economics, and met with Czech Senate President Milos Vystrcil in Prague on Tuesday and European Parliament Vice President Nicola Beer in Brussels on Friday.
Wu also met with 12 lawmakers at the European Parliament, including European Parliament Subcommittee on Security and Defence Vice Chair Rasa Jukneviciene, Belgium-Taiwan Friendship Group copresident Georges Dallemagne, Luxembourgian lawmaker Claude Wiseler and member of the British House of Lords Sal Brinton, the ministry said in a news release yesterday.
The European Parliament-Taiwan Friendship Group and the Belgium-Taiwan Friendship Group each issued a certificate of appreciation and a joint letter of appreciation to Wu in recognition of his contributions to deepening the partnership between Taiwan, and the EU and Belgium, it said.
The European lawmakers and Wu exchanged opinions on cooperation between Taiwan and Europe, the situation in the Taiwan Strait and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it said.
Jukneviciene, who was Lithuanian minister of defense from 2008 to 2012, was quoted by the ministry as saying that Taiwan had demonstrated its courage in safeguarding democracy and freedom in the face of China’s ambition to expand.
Enhancing Taiwan-EU relations has become the consensus of cross-party members of the European Parliament, she added.
Dallemagne called on Europe to continue its firm support for Taiwan’s freedom, democracy and international participation, the ministry said.
He presented to Wu a letter of appreciation signed by the six copresidents of the Belgium-Taiwan Friendship Group, it said.
Wiseler thanked Taiwan for donating urgently needed masks to Luxembourg and other European countries in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, and affirmed Taiwan’s contribution to global public health, it said.
Brinton urged Europe to unite with Taiwan to take on challenges posed by authoritarian countries and expressed appreciation for the Taiwanese government and Taiwanese providing aid to Ukraine, it said.
Wu thanked the lawmakers for supporting cross-strait peace and stability, closer Taiwan-Europe cooperation and Taiwan’s participation in international organizations, the ministry said.
The high-level reception received by the minister underlined the importance the European Parliament attaches to Taiwan and the actions it takes to bolster cooperative partnerships, it said.
Additional reporting by CNA
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has